Context Posts

Who Were the Samaritans in the Bible – And Who Are They Today? Few groups in the bible carry as much weight in a single name as the Samaritans. They appear in some of the most powerful stories Jesus ever told, yet most readers know almost nothing a…

Have you ever wondered how many times in the Bible is the word "table", "banquet" "feast" "eats" "feeding" and "meal" mentioned.  This is a context signal we call Tablemetrics.  Tablemetrics is the measurable pattern of God’s work happening around…

Biblical literature is not merely a collection of historical accounts and moral teachings; it is an intricately woven tapestry where numbers serve as a profound symbolic language that transcends simple counting. To the ancient writers, numbers often…

The Divine Subversion: Why the "God Story" is Written in Parables For years, many of us treated the Bible like a technical manual—a collection of data points and "proof texts" used to win arguments or solidify doctrines. But if you look at how the …

Key Takeaways Biblical hyperbole is a deliberate figure of speech where more is said than is literally meant, designed to emphasize spiritual truth rather than convey factual information. Jesus frequently used hyperbolic statements to confront the …

Peshat: Beyond “Literalism” Reading Scripture with Context and Meaning When you hear that peshat means the “plain sense” or literal meaning of Scripture, you might assume it refers to a quick, surface-level reading. In Jewish tradition, however, pe…

Literary Structure: Why the Bible Is Built the Way It Is One of the most overlooked signals in Scripture is not the words themselves… …but how those words are arranged. We tend to read the Bible as a collection of verses. But the biblical author…

Implicit vs. Explicit Meaning: Why We Miss What Scripture Is Doing One of the biggest reasons Scripture gets misunderstood is that we’ve been trained to only trust what is explicit.  If it’s not clearly stated, directly commanded, or plainly explai…

The Context of Tension, Part One We have often talked a lot of about context and why it matters in the Bible.  When you are aware of it, it makes the story come alive and more importantly, we are able to reference it as it was intended.  Too many t…

Famine: When Context Starves, So Does the Church Some themes in Scripture carry what I call layered significance—layers that push far beyond the basic who, what, when, where, and why.  These layers often make up an explanation of context that go f…

The Five W's of Biblical Context—Plus the Hidden Layers Most People Miss Getting the context conviction is a long journey.  This is not a one and done lesson.  Any church that teaches a Sunday sermon on this topic and calls it complete is missing o…

The Told Principle You may have heard about "The Told Principle" in episode three of our podcast.  Or maybe you are just now stumbling upon this principle now. The told principle is taught to us at an early age.  We go to school and we are taught …